Northbrook, Illinois.
Typical home $710,527 (+10.0% in a year), asking rent $3,014 (+3.7%). Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
to buy the typical home at today's mortgage rate — +$2,011 (+117%) since Jan 2020.
- 1 year
- Up $64,560 +10%
- $645,967$710,527 since Sep 2025
- 5 years
- Up $193,692 +37%
- $516,835$710,527 since Sep 2021
Monthly payment to buy the typical home
Home value × that month's 30-year mortgage rate, 20% down, principal and interest. This is the line households feel: prices and rates compound each other.
- Northbrook$3,729
- Illinois$1,553
- United States$1,922
At the last five years' pace, a typical home here doubles in price every 11 years.
Typical home values in Northbrook, IL rose 10.0% over the past year — faster than the nation's +1.2%.
Asking rents in Northbrook, IL rose 3.7% over the past year — faster than the nation's +2.7%.
Owning the typical home in Northbrook runs $2,606/mo more than renting one — the widest that gap has been in this data.
That is $5,620 a month against $3,014 rent: a $3,729 mortgage payment, plus $1,130 property tax and $761 insurance & upkeep.
Owning vs renting — Northbrook
The owning line is the typical home's monthly payment at that month's rate, plus property tax and insurance & upkeep; the renting line is the typical asking rent; the grey line is the mortgage payment on its own. Same homes, same months, both ways of paying for a roof.
- Owning all in$5,620
- Renting$3,014
- Mortgage only$3,729
Property tax · $1,130/mo 1.91% of value a year — the ACS 2020-2024 median bill over the median home value for Cook County, IL
Insurance & upkeep · $761/mo insurance, maintenance and repairs together, from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey — the national figure for mortgaged homeowners, scaled to this market's home value. BLS publishes the three bundled and they cannot be split.
Both are priced off the same month's home value, so they rise with the market. Neither is a quote — a specific home's bill depends on its assessment, its age and its insurer.
Living in Northbrook, Cook County, Illinois
Northbrook is a village of 35,222 people in Cook County. Half its households earn more than $157,782 a year and half less, against $83,498 across Cook County; 4% of its people live below the poverty line. 87% of its homes are lived in by their owners and 13% are rented. Unemployment in Northbrook was 4.8% in August 2026, and Cook County had 1.1% more jobs in 2025 than the year before. The most residents work in schools and health care, then professional services.
Written by AI Claude Sonnet 5.5 wrote this on 23 October 2026 from the figures here, a list of nearby places and what it knows. It can be wrong or out of date.
What it’s like
The place. Northbrook is a village in Cook County, home to people who are older on average than across the county and who mostly own the homes they live in. Incomes run well above the county's, far fewer households live below the poverty line than is typical, and nearly all adults hold a four-year degree or better. Winters are cold, with January highs near freezing, and the year brings a good deal of snow alongside summers that turn warm in July.
Work. Residents most often work in schools, hospitals and social care, followed by professional and business services, banks, insurance and property, and shops. Among the largest workplaces in Northbrook are Highland Baking Company, Northbrook SD 28 and Stepan Company. Commutes are of a middling length, and a good share of residents work from home.
Things to do. The Chicago Botanic Garden is in or beside town, a botanical garden that makes an easy outing close to home. Farther afield, a longer drive brings you to the Art Institute of Chicago, a museum, and to Millennium Park, a garden-style public park in the city.
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- 13,302households
- 73%of adults have a degree
- 4%below the poverty line
- 27 mintypical commute
- 32%work from home
What residents work in
Employed residents by industry, from the Census survey. Cook County had 2,594,810 jobs in 2025, 1.1% more than the year before (Bureau of Labor Statistics).
Weather through the year
Coldest in January, with highs near 32° and lows near 16°; warmest in July, with highs near 84° and lows near 63°. About 34 inches of snow and 40 inches of rain and melted snow a year.
Average daily high and low, 1991–2020, at the Chicago Botanic Garden weather station, 3 miles away (NOAA).
Largest workplaces in Northbrook
- Highland Baking CompanyFood manufacturer510
- Northbrook SD 28School district406FTE
- Bell Flavors and FragrancesConcentrates, flavoring, manufacturing398
- Compass Health CenterMds', mental health, offices384
- Stepan CompanyBar soaps manufacturing318
- Covenant Living of NorthbrookContinuing care retirement communities264
- Northbrook ESD 27School district227FTE
- The Levy CoCarpentry, framing225
Staff on average in 2025, as each workplace reported it to OSHA with its injury records: 52 workplaces with 20 or more staff, 6,192 people in all. School districts come from the Common Core of Data (NCES, 2023–24); FTE marks full-time equivalent staff. Not listed: many offices and banks, which need not report to OSHA; military bases, whose staff OPM withholds; and, in about half the states, city and county governments.
Natural hazards
- Cold wavesVery high
- TornadoesVery high
- Inland floodingRelatively high
- Heat wavesRelatively high
- HailRelatively moderate
- Winter weatherrelatively high in parts of NorthbrookRelatively moderate
FEMA’s National Risk Index (December 2025) rates the risk each natural hazard poses to the people, buildings and farms in Northbrook’s census tracts, against the rest of the country; all of them together, relatively high. It is meant for planning, not a substitute for a local risk assessment or a flood map: FEMA’s index.
From the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 census and its American Community Survey (2020–2024 five-year estimates), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. A survey, so each figure has a margin of error, and figures it is not sure of are left out. More on Cook County and the Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI metro.
Northbrook home values
Zillow measures a city over its municipal boundary. Against the state and national figures, mid-tier homes, smoothed and seasonally adjusted.
- Northbrook$710,527
- Illinois$295,943
- United States$366,157
Sellers are cutting prices on about 1 in 4 Northbrook listings, and the typical home goes pending in 16 days — the market is cooling.
When this market ran hot
Each cell is that month's year-on-year home-value growth. Read left to right, top row is the latest year — the 2021–22 band is the boom.
Market heat, inside the city limits
Share of listings with a price cut
The early-warning dial: sellers cut when buyers stop reaching. Rising cuts cool a market months before prices notice.
- Northbrook27.25%
- United States26.90%
Days to pending
How long the typical listing takes to go under contract.
- Northbrook16
- United States27
Homes for sale
Active for-sale inventory. More supply hands power to buyers.
- Northbrook132
New listings per month
Sellers arriving at the market.
- Northbrook51
Median sale price
What buyers actually paid — closed sales, not asking prices.
- Northbrook$636,391
- United States$371,407
Sale-to-list ratio
Above 100%, homes sell over asking; below, buyers negotiate wins.
- Northbrook103.43%
Zip codes with a Northbrook address
A different geography, not a breakdown. The figure above covers the municipality; these zips cover everywhere the Post Office calls Northbrook — often including townships beyond the city limits. Both come straight from Zillow, and they are not expected to average out.